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ADVICE 


NEW  POETRY 
FALL,   1920 

OCTOBER 

By  Robert  Bridges 

THE  FORERUNNER 
By  Eahltt  Gibran 

WORDSWORTH:  AN  ANTHOLOGY 
By  R.  Cobden-Sanderson 

ADVICE 

By   Maxwell  Bodenheim 


ADVICE 

A    BOOK   OF  POEMS 


By  MAXWELL  BODENHEIM 


NEW    YORK 
ALFRED- A-KNOPF 

1920 


COPYRIGHT,  1920,  BY 
ALFRED  A.  KNOPF,  INC. 


PRINTED    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF    AMERICA 


TO 

MINNA 

WHOSE  SMILE  IS  MY  THRONE 


1316834 


Some  of  the  poems  which  compose  this  book 
have  appeared  in  the  Yale  Review,  the  Smart 
Set,  the  New  Republic,  Reedy's  Mirror,  the 
Dial,  the  Touchstone,  the  Little  Review,  Poetry: 
A  Magazine  of  Verse,  the  Century,  and  the  New 
York  Tribune.  They  are  good,  in  spite  of  their 
numerous  appearances. 


CONTENTS 

ADVICE  TO  A  STREET-PAVEMENT  13 
ADVICE  TO  A  BUTTER-CUP  14 
ADVICE  TO  A  RIVER  STEAMBOAT  15 
FOUNDRY  WORKERS  16 
ADVICE  TO  A  HORNED  TOAD  18 
ADVICE  TO  A  FOREST  19 
RATTLESNAKE  MOUNTAIN  FABLE  I  21 
ADVICE  TO  A  BLUEBIRD  23 
To  A  FRIEND  24 
ADVICE  TO  A  WOMAN  25 
RATTLESNAKE  MOUNTAIN  FABLE  II  26 
ADVICE  TO  A  BUTTERFLY  28 
ADVICE  TO  A  POOL  29 
WHEN  FOOLS  DISPUTE  30 
ADVICE  TO  A  GRASS-BLADE  31 
EAST-SIDE:  NEW  YORK  32 
To  A  MAN  33 
THE  CHILD  MEDITATES  34 
PIERROT  OBJECTS  36 


COLUMBINE  REFLECTS  37 

RATTLE  SNAKE  MOUNTAIN  DIALOGUE  38 

DIALOGUE  BETWEEN  A  PAST  AND  PRESENT 

POET  41 
SMILES  43 

THE  COURTESAN  CHATS  45 
THE  MOUNTEBANK  CRITICIZES  47 
To  Li  T'AI  Po  49 
INSANITY  51 
TRACK-WORKERS  53 
FIGURE  55 
NEGROES  56 
BROADWAY  58 
FIFTH  AVENUE  60 
YOUNG  WOMAN  62 
Two  WOMEN  ON  A  STREET  64 
ADVICE  TO  MAPLE  TREES  66 
BOARDING  HOUSE  EPISODE  67 
VAUDEVILLE  MOMENT  70 
To  ORRICK  JOHNS  72 
YOUNG  POET  73 

STEEL  MILLS:  SOUTH  CHICAGO  74 
SOUTH  STATE  STREET:  CHICAGO  81 


ADVICE 


ADVICE  TO  A  STREET-PAVEMENT 

Lacerated  grey  has  bitten 

Into  your  shapeless  humility. 

Little  episodes  of  roving 

Strew  their  hieroglyphics  on  your  muteness. 

Life  has  given  you  heavy  stains 

Like  an  ointment  growing  stale. 

Endless  feet  tap  over  you 

With  a  maniac  insistence. 

0  unresisting  street-pavement, 

Keep  your  passive  insolence 

At  the  dwarfs  who  scorn  you  with  their  feet. 

Only  one  who  lies  upon  his  back 

Can  disregard  the  stars. 


[13] 


ADVICE  TO  A  BUTTER-CUP 

Undistinguished   butter-cup 

Lost  among  myriads  of  others, 

To  the  red  ant  eyeing  you 

You  are  giant  stillness. 

He  pauses  on  the  boulder  of  a  clod, 

Baffled  by  your  nearness  to  the  sky. 

But  to  the  black  loam  at  your  feet 

You  are  the  atom  of  a  pent-up  dream. 

Undistinguished  butter-cup, 

Take  your   little  breath   of  contemplation, 

Undisturbed  by  haughty  tricks  of  space. 


[14] 


ADVICE  TO  A  RIVER  STEAM-BOAT 

The  brass  band  plays  upon  your  decks, 
Like   a   sturdy   harlot   aping  mirth, 
And  people  in  starched  shields 
Stuff  their  passions  with  sweet  words, 
Life  is  swishing  in  the  air, 
Like  a  tipsy,  unseen  bridegroom. 

0  humbly  grunting  river  boat, 
Take  the  churning  water  and  the  sun 
Like  one  who   plays  with  his   own   chains 
And  flings  their  turmoil  to  the  sky. 
Only  a  voice  can  leap  above  high  walls. 


[15] 


FOUNDRY  WORKERS 

Brown  faces  twisted  back 

Into  an  ecstasy  of  tight  resistance; 

Eyes  that  are  huge  sweat  drops 

Unheeded  by  the  struggle  underneath  them  — 

Throughout  the  night  you  stagger  under  walls 

Where  life  is  squeezed  to  squealing  bitterness. 

Beneath  your  heaving  flash  of  limbs 

Your  thoughts  are  smashed  to  a  dejected  trance 

And  you  are  swept,  like  empty  mites, 

Into  a  glistening  frenzy  of  motion  .  .  . 

Yet,  on  a  Sunday  afternoon 

I  have  seen  you  straightening  your  backs  with 

slow  smiles; 

Walking  through  the  streets 
And  patiently  groping  for  lost  outlines. 
Your  lips  were  placid  bruises 
Almost  fearing  to  relax, 
And  often  out  upon  some  green 
[16] 


Your    legs    swung    themselves    into    long    lost 
shapes. 

Perhaps  upon  your  death-beds 

You  will  lift  your  hands,  with  a  wraith  of  grace, 

Showing  life  a  last,  weak  curve 

Of  the  rhythm  he  could  not  kill. 


[17] 


ADVICE  TO  A  HORNED  TOAD 

Horned  Toad  of  cloven  brown, 

Rock  souls  have  dwindled  to  your  eyes 

And  thrown  a  splintered  end  upon  your  blood. 

Night  and  day  have  vanished 

To  you,  who  squat  and  watch 

Years  loosen  one  sand  grain  until 

Its  fall  becomes  your  moment. 

Tall  things  plunge  over  you, 

Slashing  their  dreams  with  motion 

That  holds  the  death  of  all  they  seek, 

Rut  you,  to  whom  fierce  winds  are  ripples, 

Do  not  move  lest  you  lose  the  taste  of  stillness. 

Homed  Toad  of  cloven  brown, 
Never  hor>  from  your  grey  rock  crevice 
Mute   with   interwoven   beginnings   and   ends. 
The  fluid  lies  of  motion 
Leave  no  remembrance  behind. 
[18] 


ADVICE  TO  A  FOREST 

0  trees,  to  whom  the  darkness  is  a  child 
Scampering    in    and    out    of   your    long,    green 

beards ; 

0  trees,  to  whom  sunlight  is  a  tattered  pilgrim 
Counting  his  dreams  within  your  hermitage 
And  slipping  down  the  road,  in  twilight  robes; 
0  trees,  whose  leaves  make  an  incense  of  sound 
Reeling  with  the  beat  of  your  caught  feet, 
Do  not  mingle  your  tips  in  startled  hatred, 
When  little  men  come  to  fell  you. 
These  men  will  saw  you  into  strips 
Of  pointed  brooding,  blind  with  paint, 
But  underneath  you  men  will  chase 
The  grey  staccato  of  their  lives 
Down  a  glaring  maze  of  walls 
Much  harder  than  your  own. 
And  when,  at  last,  the  deep  brown  gaze 
Of  stolidly  amorous  time  steals  over  you, 
[19] 


The  little  men  who  bit  into  your  hearts 
Will  stray  off  in  a  patter  of  rabbits'  feet. 
Look  down  upon  these  children  then 
With   the  aloof  and   weary  tolerance 
That  all  still  things  possess, 
0  trees,  to  whom  the  darkness  was  a  child 
Scampering    in    and    out   of   your    long,    green 
beards. 


[20] 


RATTLESNAKE  MOUNTAIN  FABLE  I 

Rounded  to  a  wide  eyed  clownishness 
Crowned  by  the  shifting  bravado 
Of  his  long,  brown  ears, 
The  rabbit  peeked  at  the  sky. 
To  him,  the  sky  seemed  an  angelic 
Pasture  stripped  to  phantom  tranquility, 
Where  one  could  nibble  thoughtfully. 
He  longed  to  leave  his  mild  furtiveness 
And  speak  to  a  boldness  puzzled  by  his  flesh. 
With  one  long  circle  of  despairing  grace 
He  flashed  into  the  air, 
Leaping  toward  his  heaven. 
But  down  he  crashed  against  a  snake 
Who  ate  him  with  a  meditative  interest. 
From  that  day  on  the  snake  was  filled 
With  little,  meek  whispers  of  concern. 
The  crushed   and   peaceful   rabbit's  dream 
Cast  a  groping  hush  upon  his  blood. 

[21] 


He  curled  inertly  on  a  rock, 
In  cryptic,  wilted  savageness. 
In  the  end,  his  dry,  grey  body 
Was  scattered  out  upon  the  rock, 
Like  a  story  that  could  not  be  told. 


[22] 


ADVICE  TO  A  BLUE-BIRD 

Who  can  make  a  delicate  adventure 

Of  walking   on  the  ground? 

Who   can  make  grass-blades 

Arcades  for  pertly  careless  straying? 

You  alone,  who  skim  against  these  leaves, 

Turning  all  desire  into  light  whips 

Moulded  by  your  deep  blue  wing-tips, 

You  who  shrill  your  unconcern 

Into  the  sternly  antique  sky. 

You  to  whom  all  things 

Hold   an  equal   kiss  of  touch. 

Mincing,  wanton  blue-bird, 

Grimace  at  the  hoofs  of  passing  men. 

You  alone  can  lose  yourself 

Within  a  sky,  and  rob  it  of  its  blue! 


[23] 


TO  A  FRIEND 

Your  head  is  steel  cut  into  drooping  lines 

That  make  a  mask  satirically  meek: 

Your  face  is  like  a  tired  devil  weak 

From  drinking  many  vague  and  unsought  wines. 

The  sullen  skepticism  of  your  eyes 

For  ever  trying  to  transcend  itself, 

Is  often  entered  by  a  wistful  elf 

Who  sits  naively  unperturbed  and  wise. 

And  this  same  remnant,  with  its  youthful  wiles 
Held  curiously  apart  from  blasphemies, 
Twirls  starlight  shivers  out  upon  your  sneers 
And  changes  them  to  little,  startled  smiles. 
And  all  your  insolence  drops  to  its  knees 
Before  the  half-won  grandeur  of  past  years. 


[24] 


ADVICE  TO  A  WOMAN 

The  sloping  lines  of  your  shoulders 

Speak  of  Chinese  pagodas. 

They  clash  with  your  western  face 

Where  child  and  courtesan 

Clasp  each  other  in  a  feigned  embrace. 

Life,  to  you,  is  a  liquid  mirror. 

You  stand  with  delicate,  perpetual  amazement, 

Vainly  seeking  your  reflection. 


[25] 


RATTLESNAKE  MOUNTAIN  FABLE  II 

August  sauntered  down  the  mountain-side, 
Dropping  mottled,  turbid  wraiths  of  decay. 
The  air  was  like  an  old  priest 
Disrobing  without  embarrassment 
Before  the  dark  and  candid  gaze  of  night. 
But  these  things  brought  no  pause 
To  the  saucily  determined  squirrel. 
His  eyes  were  hungrily  upturned 
To  where  the  stars  hung  —  icily  clustered  nuts 
Dotting  trees  of  solitude. 
He  saw  the  stars  just  over  the  horizon, 
And  they  seemed  to  grow 
On  trees  that  he  could  reach. 
So  he  scampered  on,  from  branch  to  branch, 
Wondering  why  the  fairy  nut-trees 
Ran  away  from  him. 
But,  looking  down,  he  spied 
A  softly  wild  cheeked  mountain  pool, 
And  there  a  handful  of  fairy  nuts 
[26]    ' 


Bit  into  the  indigo  cupping  them. 

With  a  squeal  of  weary  happiness 

The  squirrel  plunged  into  the  mountain  pool, 

And  as  he  drowned  within  its  soundless  heart 

The  fairy  nuts  were  jigging  over  him, 

Like  the  unheard  stirring  of  a  poem. 


[27] 


ADVICE  TO  A  BUTTERFLY 

Aimless  petal  of  the  wind, 
Spinning  gently  weird  circles, 
To  the  flowers  underneath 
You  are  a  drunken  king  of  motion ; 
To  the  plunging  winds  above 
You  are  momentary  indecision. 

Aimless  petal  of  the  wind, 

Waver  carelessly  against  this  June. 

The  universe,  like  you,  is  but 

The  drowsy  arm  of  stillness 

Spinning  gently  weird  circles  in  his  sleep. 


[28] 


ADVICE  TO  A  POOL 

Be  a  liquid  threshold  for  the  dawn 
And  let  night  touch  you  with  his  back. 
The  earth-bowl   prisoning  you,  and  cold  night 
winds 

Are  only  pause  and  rhythm 

Within  an  endless  fantasy, 

But  you,  like  they,  can  be 

A  dream  from  the  loins  of  a  dream, 

And  build  a  golden  stairway  of  escape. 

0  coolly  unperturbed  pool, 

Slap  your  ripples  in  laughter  at  men, 

Who  splash  you  with  their  lordly  hands. 

Time  is  but  a  phantom  dagger 

That  motion  lifts  to  slay  itself. 


[29] 


WHEN  FOOLS  DISPUTE 

A  trickle  of  dawn  insinuated  itself 

Through  the  crevices  of  black  satiation. 

The  elderly  trees  coughed,  lightly,  hurriedly, 

In  remonstrance  against  the  invasion. 

Lean  with  a  virginal  poison, 

The   grass-blades   shook,   immune  to   light   and 

time. 

A  bird  lost  in  a  tree 
Shrilly  flirted  with  its  energy  .  .  . 
One  fool,  in  the  garden,  spoke  to  another. 


[30] 


ADVICE  TO  A  GRASS-BLADE 

Thin  and  dark  green  symbol 
Of  an  earth  forever  raising 
Myriads  of  chained  wings, 
Breezes  have  a  form,  to  you, 
And  sounds  break  into  vivid  shape. 
The  proud  finality  of  tiny  sight 
Cannot  lure  your  pliant  blindness. 

Thin  and  dark  green  blade, 
Be  not  awed  by  trees  and  men 
Whose  sound  is  all  that  gives  them  life. 
You  reach  the  sky  because  your  face 
Is  not  turned  toward  it. 


[31] 


EAST-SIDE:  NEW  YORK 

An  old  Jew  munches  an  apple, 

With  conquering  immersion 

All  the  thwarted  longings  of  his  life 

Urge  on  his  determined  teeth. 

His  face  is  hard  and  pear-shaped; 

His  eyes  are  muddy  capitulations; 

But  his  mouth  is  incongruous. 

Softly,  slightly  distended, 

Like  that  of  a  whistling  girl, 

It  is  ingenuously  haunting 

And  makes  the  rest  of  him  a  soiled,  grey  back 
ground. 

Hopes  that  lie  within  their  grave 

Of  submissive  sternness, 

Have    spilled    their   troubled    ghosts    upon   this 
mouth, 

And  a  tortured  belief 

Has  dwindled  into  tenderness  upon  it  ... 

He  trudges  off  behind  his  push-cart 

And  the  Ghetto  walks  away  with  him. 
[32] 


TO  A  MAN 

Master  of  earnest  equilibrium, 

You  are  a  Christ  made  delicate 

By  centuries  of  baffled  meditation. 

You  curve  an  old  myth  to  a  peaceful  sword, 

Like  some  sleep-walker  challenging 

The  dream  that  gave  him  shape. 

With  gentle,  antique  insistence 

You  place  your  child's  hand  on  the  universe 

And  trace  a  smile  of  love  within  its  depths. 

And  yet,  the  whirling  scarecrow  men  have  made 

Of  something  that  eludes  their  sight, 

May  have  the  startling  simplicity  of  your  smile. 

Once  every  thousand  years 
Stillness  fades  into  a  shape 
That  men  may  crucify. 


[33] 


THE  CHILD  MEDITATES 

The  oak-tree  in  front  of  my  house 

Smells  different  every  morning. 

Sometimes  it  smells  fresh  and  wise 

Like  my  mother's  hair. 

Sometimes  it  stands  ashamed 

Because  it  does  n't  own  the  smell 

It  borrowed  from  our  flower-garden. 

Sometimes  it  has  a  windy  smell, 

As  though  it  had  come  back  from  a  long  walk. 

The  oak-tree  in  front  of  my  house 

Has  different  smells,  like  grown  up  people. 

My  doll  hides  behind  her  pink  cheeks, 
So  that  you  can't  see  when  she  moves, 
But  it  doesn't  matter  because 
She  always  moves  when  no  one  is  looking, 
And  that  is  why  people  think  she  is  still. 
People  laugh  when  I  say  that  my  doll  is  alive, 
[34] 


But  if  she  were  dead,  my  fingers 

Wouldn't  know  that  they  were  touching  her. 

She  lives  inside  a  little  house. 

And  laughs  because  I  cannot  find  the  door. 

The  colours  in  my  room 

Meet  each  other  and  hesitate. 

Is  that  what  people  call  shape? 

Nobody  seems  to  think  so, 

But  I  believe  that  lines  are  dead  shapes 

Unless  they  fall  against  each  other 

And  look  surprised,  like  the  colours  in  my  room! 


[35] 


PIERROT  OBJECTS 

They  have  made  me  an  airy  apology 

For  the  crude  insistence  of  their  flesh! 

They  have  made  me  twist  my  tongue 

Into  fickle  nonchalance! 

With  a  languid  impudence 

I  have  tarried  underneath  the  moon, 

While  the  haggard  reticence 

Of  their  lives  forgot  itself  within  me! 

Well,  I  am  rebelling 

At  the  men  who  make  me 

Their  grimacing  marionnette! 

Let  them  find  another  dancing-teacher 

For  their  dull,  unruffled  fears. 

I  am  off  to  tear  my  black  and  white 

Into  shreds,  within  a  valley 

Where  nakedness  and  colours  do  not  need 

An  artificial  night  to  make  them  brave! 

[36] 


COLUMBINE  REFLECTS 

They  have  moulded  my  face  with  a  tear  and  a 

sneer. 

They  have  sandalled  me  with  caprice, 
And  the  heart  they  have  given  me 
Is  a  bag  of  red  tissue-paper. 
Their  loves  are  ragged  and  fat 
And  seek  the  consolation 
Of  a  tinkling  effigy! 
But  even  an  effigy  may  wink 
An  eye  at  its  slinking  masters! 
I  can  laugh  at  their  frantic,  tattered  arms 
Spinning  me  into  impish  posturings, 
And  jeer  at  the  faces  behind  me! 
After  my  play  I  go  to  sleep, 
But  they  must  sit,  heavily  looking  at  each  other. 


[37] 


RATTLE-SNAKE  MOUNTAIN  DIALOGUE 

RATTLE-SNAKE  MOUNTAIN 

Every  night  the  sky  grips  my  shoulder,  in  pain. 

The  cows  upon  my  slope 

Attack  their  blades  of  grass  with  less  decision. 

The  boulders  reaching  in  to  form  my  ribs, 

Are  touched  by  evening  dizziness,  to  dust, 

And  lose  their  fierce  pretence  of  hardness. 

Three  crows  in  a  row 

Search  for  clearer  tongues,  with  steady  discords. 

MAN 

The  nervous  dissolution 
Which  men  call  beauty  stands 
Sternly  watching  itself. 

RATTLE-SNAKE  MOUNTAIN 

Evening,  staggering  under  dead  men's  tongues, 
Makes  light  of  my  loneliness. 
[38] 


He  comes  like  a  madman  dissolved 

Into  unbearable  quietness. 

But,  drinking  my  vigorous  muteness, 

He  melts  into  that  stream  of  seeking  motion 

Which  men  call  morning. 


MAN 

You  teach  him  to  make  his  recompense 

A  solitary  unfolding 

Walking  perilously 

Between  the  scowls  of  life  and  death. 


RATTLE-SNAKE  MOUNTAIN 

When  he  goes  he  is  something  more  than  him 
self. 

He  holds  a  lean  alertness 
That,  green  as  any  leaf, 
Takes  the  flutterings  of  life,  unperturbed. 

MAN 

Beauty  is  a  proud  stare 
Challenging  all  things  to  remove 
Their  inattentive  clamours: 

[39] 


And  some  things  bow  abruptly, 
Timidly  stroking  their  untouched  skins. 

RATTLE-SNAKE  MOUNTAIN 

And  thus  evening  bows  into  morning. 


[40] 


DIALOGUE  BETWEEN  A  PAST  AND 
PRESENT  POET 

PAST  POET 

I  wrote  of  roses  on  a  woman's  breast, 

Glowing  as  though  her  blood 

Had   welled    out   to    a    spellbound    fierceness; 

And  the  glad,  light  mixture  of  her  hair. 

I  wrote  of  God  and  angels. 

They  stole  the  simple  blush  of  my  desire 

To  make  their  isolated  triumph  human. 

Knights  and  kings  flooded  my  song, 

Catching  with   their  glittering  clash 

The  unheard  boldness  in  my  life. 

Gods  and  nymphs   slipped   through  my  voice, 

And  with  the  lofty  scurrying  of  their  feet 

Spurned  the  smirched  angers  of  my  days. 

PRESENT  POET 

You  raised  an  unhurried,  church-like  escape. 
[41] 


You  lingered  in  shimmering  idleness; 
Or  lengthened  a  prayer  into  a  lance; 
Or  strengthened  a  thought  till  it  heaved  off  all 

of  life 
And    dropped    its    sightless    heaven    into    your 

smile. 

Life,  to  us,  is  a  colourless  tangle. 
Like  madly  gorgeous  weavers 
Our  eyes  reiterate  themselves  on  life. 

PAST  POET 

My  towering  simplicity 

Loosening  an  evening  of  belief 

Over  the  things  it  dared  not  view, 

Gladly  shunned  reality 

Just  as  your  mad  weaver  does. 

PRESENT  POET 
Reality  is  a  formless  lure, 
And  only  when  we  know  this 
Do  we  dare  to  be  unreal. 


[42] 


SMILES 

Smiles  are  the  words  beyond  the  words 
That  thoughts  abandon  helplessly. 
Upon  this  nervous  shop-girl's  face, 
Where  clusters  of  tiny  limpness  meet, 
A     frightened    spark     leaps    high     and     drops 
Into  the  hot  pause  of  a  banished  love. 
A  lustrelessly  plump 
Girl  beside  her  does  not  know 
That  her  face  for  moments  glows 
Into  a  helpless  solitude. 
Upon  an  old  man's  face 
Are  gleams  of  meek  embarrassment  — 
The  faded  presence  of  some  old  debt? 
This  woman's  face  is  scorched 
By  a  torch  that  falls  from  weary  hands 
And  makes  her  laugh  an  unheard  lie. 
The  face  of  this  tamed  sprite 
Shimmers  with  an  understanding 
[43] 


Of  the  opaque  loss  she  cannot  bear, 
And  I  see  that  smiles  are  sometimes 
Words  beyond  the  words 
That  thoughts  abandon  hopefully. 


[44] 


THE  COURTESAN  CHATS 

Last  night  I  met  a  passive  man 
With  almost  no  curve  to  his  face, 
And  skin  relentlessly  white. 
He  made  me  tell  his  fortune 
With  a  pack  of  cards. 
"  Jack  of  hearts  —  your  love  will  be 
A  scullion  overturning  trays  of  food 
And  standing  dubiously  in  their  midst." 
"  Queen  of  diamonds  —  you  will  have  a  wife 
Like  a  thistle  dipped  in  frost, 
Helpless  in  your  sheathed  hands." 
"  Deuce  of  clubs  —  a  downcast  jester 
Will  pester  you  with  slanting  malice 
When  you  seek  to  play  the  king." 
"  Ace  of  hearts  —  your  life  will  stand 
Straight  in  a  desperate  majesty, 
Its  lurid  robes  ever  slipping 
And  one  wound  endlessly  dripping." 
[45] 


The  passive  man  blew  out  a  candle 
On  the  table  and  bade  me  leave, 
Not  desiring;  me  to  see  his  face. 


[46] 


THE  MOUNTEBANK  CRITICIZES 

I  lose  all  sense  of  profiles, 

Strolling    through   your   greys   and   blacks   and 

browns! 

No  man  bestows  his  orange  robe 
Soberly  upon  your  uncoloured  pavements, 
Rebuking  life  lor  being  death. 
No  woman  taunts  her  sorrows 
With  a  coloured  haughtiness. 
When  you  take  to  colours,  you  are  ashamed, 
Like  pages  nibbling  at  a  pilfered  tart. 
You  go  back  quickly  to  your  coldness. 
And  since  you  have  no  colours  on  your  clothes, 
You  walk  in  straight  and  measured  lilts 
As  befits  the  seriously  blind. 
Your  women  do  not  stroll  as  though 
Each  step  were  a  timid  intrigue 
Woven  into  the  climax  to  which  they  fare. 

[47] 


Pistols,  rhapsodies  and  heavy  odours 

Drugged  the  lustre  of  my  time. 

Yet,  we  had  a  virtue. 

We  lavished  colours  on  our  backs 

And  ravished  our  sorrow  with  brightness 

That  often  gave  a  lightness  to  our  feet! 


[48] 


TO  LI  T'AI  PO 

They  are  writing  poems  to  you: 

White  devils  who  have  not 

Smeared  the  distant  yellow  of  your  life 

Upon  their  skins. 

Faces  where  snob  and  harlequin 

Ogle  each  other  in  two,  cold  colours, 

White  and  red; 

Faces  where  middle  age 

Sits,  tearing  a  last  gardenia; 

Faces  continually  cracked 

By  the  brittle  larceny  of  age; 

Faces  where  emotions 

Stand  disarmed  within  a  calm  mirage: 

These  faces  bend  over  paper 

And  steal  from  you  a  little  silver  and  red 

So  that  their  lives  may  seem  to  bleed 

Under  the  prick  of  a  flashing  need. 

[49] 


The  old  and  tired  smile 

Of  one  who  spies  too  much  within  himself 

To  spare  the  effort  of  a  halting  frown, 

Brushed  its  sceptre  over  your  face. 

You  gave  kind  eyes  to  your  hope, 

Desiring  it  to  grope  unfearing 

Underneath  the  toppling  mountain-tops. 

The  wine  you   drank   was  a   lake 

In  which  you  splashed  and  found  a  vigour; 

The  wine  you  drank  was  void  of  taste. 

Your  yellow  skin  resembled 

A  balanced  docility 

Smiling  at  all  things  —  even  at  itself  — 

Li  T'ai  Po. 


[50] 


INSANITY 

Like  a  vivid  hyperbole, 
The  sun  plunged  into  April's  freshness, 
And  struck  its  sparkling  madness 
Against  the  barnlike  dejection 
Of  this  dark  red  insane  asylum. 
A  softly  clutching  noise 
Stumbled  from  the  open  windows. 
Now  and  then  obliquely  reeling  shrieks 
Rose,  as  though  from  men 
To  whom  death  had  assumed 
An  inexpressibly  kindly  face. 
A  man  stood  at  one  window, 
His  gaunt  face  trembling  underneath 
A  feverish  jauntiness. 
A  long  white  feather  slanted  back 
Upon  his  almost  shapeless  hat, 
Like  an  innocent  evasion. 
Hotly  incessant,  his  voice 
[51] 


Methodically  flogged  the  April  air: 

A  voice  that  held  the  clashing  bones 

Of  happiness  and  fear; 

A  voice  in  which  emotion 

Sharply  ridiculed  itself; 

A  monstrously  vigorous  voice 

Mockingly  tearing  at  life 

With   an  unanswerable  question. 

Hollowed  out  by  his  howl, 

I  turned  and  saw  an  asylum  guard. 

His  petulantly  flabby  face 

Rolled  into  deathlike  chips  of  eyes. 

He  bore  the  aimless  confidence 

Of   one  contentedly  playing  with   other   men's 

wings. 

He  walked  away;  the  man  above  still  shrieked. 
I  could  not  separate  them. 


[52], 


TRACK-WORKERS 

The  rails  you  carry  cut  into  your  hands, 
Like  the  sharp  lips  of  an  unsought  lover. 
As  you  stumble  over  the  ties 
Sunlight  is  clinging,  yellow  spit 
Raining  down  upon  your  faces. 
You  are  the  living  cuspidors  of  day. 
Dirt,  its  teasing  ghost,  dust, 
And  passionless  kicks  of  steel,  fill  you. 
Flowers  sprouting  near  the  tracks, 
Brush  their  lightly  odoured  hands 
In  vain  against  your  stale  jackets  of  sweat. 
Within  you,  minds  and  hearts 
Are  snoring  to  the  curt  rhythm  of  your  breath. 
You  do  not  see  this  blustering  blackbird 
Promenading  on  a  barbed-wire  fence. 
He  eyes  you  with  spritelike  hauteur, 
Unable  to  understand 

Why  your  motions  endlessly  copy  each  other, 
[53] 


One  of  you,  a  meek  and  burly  Pole, 
Peers  a  moment  at  the  strutting  blackbird 
With  a  fleeting  shade  of  dull  resentment.  , 
There  is  always  one  among  you 
Who  recoils  from  glimpsing  corpses. 


[54] 


FIGURE 

Through  the  turbulent  servility 

Of  a  churlish  city  street 

He  strides  opaquely;   nothing  in  his  walk 

Resembles  an  advancing  gleam. 

His  legs  are  muffled  iron 

Stubbornly  following  even  thoughts, 

His  gaily  pugnacious  head 

Seems  worried  because  no  dread 

Remains  for  it  to  slay. 

His  eyes  hold  an  austerity 

That  recalls  itself  while  leaping, 

And  often  melts  into  amusement. 

The  bent  poise  of  his  body 

Tells  of  walls  that  threw  him  back, 

Only  to  crumble  underneath 

The  stunned  friendliness  of  his  face. 

Through  the  angularly  churlish   street 

He    walks,    and    stoops    beneath    the    captured 

weight 

Of  eyes  that  do  not  see  him. 
[55] 


NEGROES 

The  loose  eyes  of  an  old  man 
Shone  aloof  upon  his  boyish  face; 
And  a  sluggish  innocence 
Hugged  his  dull  brown  skin. 
He  sang  a  hymn  caught  from  his  elders 
And  his  voice  resembled 
A  quavering,  feverish  laugh 
Softened  in  a  swaying  cradle. 
His  life  had  found  a  refuge  in  his  voice, 
And  the  rest  of  him  was  sickly  flesh 
Ignorant  of  life  and  death. 
Like  a  crushed,  excited  clown 
His  mother  shuffled  out  upon  the  porch. 
Slowly  her  dark  brown  face  resolved 
Into  the  hushed  and  sulky  look 
Of  one  who  stands  within  a  dim-walled  trap. 
Lazily  uncertain, 
She  raised  the  boy  into  her  arms. 
[56] 


Then  her  voice  swung  in  the  air 
Like  a  quavering,  feverish  laugh 
Softened  in  a  swaying  cradle. 


[57] 


BROADWAY 

With  sardonic  futility 
The  multi-coloured  crowd, 
Hurried  by  fervent  sensuality, 
Flees  from  something  carried  on  its  back. 
Endlessly  subdued,  a  sound 
Pours  up  from  the  crowd, 
Like  some  one  ever  gasping  for  breath 
To  utter  releasing  words. 
Through  the  artificial  valley 
Made  by  gaudy  evasions, 
The  stifled  crowd  files  up  and  down, 
Stabbing  thought  with  rapid  noises. 
Women  strutting  dulcetly, 
Embroider  their  unappeased  hungers, 
And  men  stumble  toward  a  flitting  opiate. 
Sometimes  a  moment  breaks  apart 
And  one  can  hear  the  knuckles 
Of  children  rapping  on  towering  doors: 
[58] 


Rapping  on  the  highway 
Where  civilization   parades 
Its  frozen  amiabilities! 


[59] 


FIFTH  AVENUE 
(NEW  YORK) 

Seasons    bring   nothing   to    this    gulch 

Save  a  harshly  intimate  anecdote 

Scrawled,  here  and  there,  on  paint  and  stone. 

The  houses  shoulder  each  other 

In  a  forced  and  passionless  communion. 

Their  harassed  angles  rise 

Like  a  violent  picture-puzzle 

Hiding  a  story  that  only  ruins  could  reveal; 

Their  straight  lines,  robbed  of  power, 

Meet  in  dwarfed  rebellion. 

Sometimes  they  stand  like  vastly  flattened  faces 

Suffering  ants  to  crawl 

In  and  out  of  their  gaping  mouths. 

Sometimes,  in  menial  attitudes 

They  stand  like  Gothic  platitudes 

Slipshodiy  carved  in  dark  brown  stone. 

[60] 


Tarnished  solemnities  of  death 

Cast  their  transfigured  hue  on  this  avenue. 

The  cool  and  indiscriminate  glare 

Of  sunlight  seems  to  desecrate  a  tomb, 

And  the  racing  people  seem 

A  stream  of  accidental  shadows. 

Hard  noises  strike  one's  face  and  make 

It  numb  with  momentary  reality, 

But  the  noiseless  undertone  returns 

And  they  change  to  unreal  jests 

Made  by  death. 


[61] 


YOUNG  WOMAN 

So  we  have  a  face 
Cupped  by  tender  insolences, 
Half  repenting  insolences 
Teasing  their  own  angers. 
Then,  a  tense  exuberance 
Brushes  them  away 
And  burns  a  humbly  erect 
Queen  upon  her  face. 
This  happens  in  the  space 
Between  a  frown  and  indecision. 
Her  face  becomes  forlornly  wild, 
And  a  beggarly  impatience 
Hovers  into  furtive  shame. 
All   the  supplely  intricate  flame 
Vanishes,  and  leaves  no  mark. 
Her  eyes  are  violently  dark 
With  a  hopeless  waiting; 
Her  lips  are  isolated  tatters  — 
[62] 


All    that    is    left    of    shattered    recreating. 
Then,  as  quickly  as  she  fled, 
The  humble  queen  returns. 
Staring  and  unappeased 
She  eyes  her  crumpled  hands. 


[63] 


TWO  WOMEN  ON  A  STREET 

This  street  is  callous  apathy 

In  a  scale  of  greys  and  browns. 

Its  black  roof-line  suggests 

Flat  bodies  unable  to  rise. 

Even  its  screams  are  listlessness 

Having  an  evil  dream. 

Its  air  is  swarthy  rawness 

Troubled  with  ash  cans  and  cellars. 

An  old  woman  ambles  on 

With  a  black  bag  that  seems  part  of  her  back, 
And  a  candidly  hawk-like  face. 
She  croons  a  smothered  lullaby 
That  sifts  a  flitting  roundness 
Into  her  sharply  parted  face. 
Then  she  surrenders  her  hand 
To  the  welter  of  a  garbage  can. 
A  hugely  wilted  woman  slinks  by 
[64] 


With  a  cracked  stare  on  her  face. 
Her  eyes  are  beaten  discs 
Of  the  lamplight's  ghastly  keenness. 
She  glides  away  as  though  the  night 
Were  a  lover  flogging  her; 
Glides  into  the  callous  apathy 
Of  this  street,  like  one  who  cringes 
Happily  into  her  lover's  hallway. 


[65] 


ADVICE  TO  MAPLE-TREES 

0  little  maple-trees, 

Slender    and    unkempt,    looking    with    shaggy 

askance 

Upon  the  moon-spiked  solitude; 
0  little  maple-trees, 
Growing  a  little  toward  the  sky 
That  touches  you  to   all  eyes  save  your  own, 
You  rattle  insistently  for  wings, 
But  wings  could  never  tear 
The  stain  of  earth  from  your  feet: 
The  earth  that  gnaws  at  you  until 
Your  wing-cries  strike  the  autumn  night. 
You  see,  with  me,  this  crescent  moon 
Juggled  on  the  tawny  fingertip 
Of  a  running  cloud. 
The  touch  of  your  desire,  or  its  fall, 
Would  but  be  symbols  of  an  equal  death. 

[66] 


BOARDING-HOUSE  EPISODE 

Apples  race  into  appetites: 

The  unswerving  mechanism  of  the  table 

Hurries  through  the  last  dish  of  supper. 

Then  an  undulating  interlude 

From  people  who  have  spent  one  pleasure, 

Distractedly  juggling  its  aftermath 

And  peering  at  new  desires. 

One  woman  gazes  at  another 

While  twitching  murder  shimmers  in  her  eyes 

And  skims  across  her  face. 

Violets  in  a  madman's  scene, 

Suspended  in  the  air, 

Are  the  eyes  of  her  neighbour. 

And  in  between  them  sits  the  nervous  man 

With   face   like   pouting   gargoyle, 

Whose  brown  eyes  shout  the  things  he  cannot 

say: 
Explosive  evasions; 

[67] 


Fears  too  tired  to  shriek; 

Renunciations  groaning  from  their  dungeons. 

He  eyes  each  woman,  like  a  man 

Solemnly  trying  to  walk  on  mysterious  ice. 

Crisp  inanities  ripple  back  and  forth 

Among  these  three,  like  ghostly  parrots 

Visiting  each  other's  cages. 

She  with  crazy,  violet  eyes, 

Plays  with  her  fork,  as  though  its  clink 

Rhymed  with  secret,  chained  thoughts; 

She  with  murder  in  her  eyes, 

And  curtly  voluminous  body, 

Evenly  plays  her  child-role. 

Cringing  on  the  rim  of  middle  age, 

With  broken  shields  piled  at  her  feet, 

She  has  made  this  man  a  haunted  palace 

And  she  stands  before  the  door 

She  dare  not  open,  with  a  dagger 

For  the  woman  standing  at  her  side. 

They  sit,  afterwards,  upon  the  veranda, 
Meekly  greeting  the  velvet  swagger  of  evening: 
Woman  with  twisted,  violet  eyes, 
Woman  with  hidden  murder  on  her  lips, 
And  man  like  a  pouting  gargoyle. 
Then,  like  tired  children, 
[68] 


Their  words  grow  cool  and  lazy. 
They  draw  closer  to  each  other 
And,  with  a  trembling  curiosity, 
Look  at  each  other's  hands. 


[69] 


VAUDEVILLE  MOMENT 

They  have  carved  a  battle 

Across  your  hard  face: 

Transfigured  conflict, 

Lines  like  suspended  lances. 

Your  voice  must  be  the  uneven 

Clink   of  the   last   carver's  chisel. 

Your  soul  must  be  a  pious  subterfuge 

Squinting  its  admiring  eyes 

At    the    lifeless    battle    lining    your    face. 

Middle  aged  vaudeville  conductor, 

With  a  hunted  leanness  on  your  body, 

Sometimes  the  swing  of  your  baton 

Sways  with  a  brooding  patience 

That  violates  your  ended  face. 

Two  acrobats  appear, 
With  their  automaton  bows. 
Their  unlit  motion  does  not  strike 
The  air  into  a  hugging  flame. 
[70] 


They  are  blue  and  orange  corpses 

Whirled  in  a  sacrilegious  festival. 

They  vividly  resemble 

The  chiseled  battle  that  grips 

This  lean  conductor's  face: 

Motion  without  life, 

And  life  that  holds  no  motion! 


[71] 


TO  ORRICK  JOHNS 

The  tread-mill  roar  that  ever  tramps  between 
The  smirched  geometries  of  this  stern  place, 
Sweeps  vainly  on  your  drowsily  reckless  face 
Lost  in  a  swirl  of  raped  loves  barely  seen. 
Sometimes  your  keenly  pagan  lips  are  raised 
By  thoughts  too  tense  to  shape  themselves  in 

speech : 

Still,  wounded  thoughts  that  silently  beseech 
Your  life  to  make  them  impotent  and  dazed. 

O  tangled  and  half-strangled  child,  you  shrink 

For  ever  from  yourself,  and  wear  a  pose 

Of  nimble  and  impenetrable  pride. 

Yet  sometimes,  wavering  on  the  sudden  brink 

Of  jaded  bitterness,  you  drop  your  clothes 

And  weave  a  prayer  into  your  naked  stride. 


[72] 


YOUNG  POET 

The  grinning  clamour  on  your  face 

Dies  abruptly,  for  moments: 

Boldness  and  timidity 

Are  swept,  transfigured,  against  each  other. 

But  the  glistening  turmoil 

Once  more  spurns  itself  with  jests 

That  light  its  troubled  hands. 

When  too  much  pain  has  lowered 
The  eyelids  of  your  mood, 
A  peaceful  humour  wraps  your  face. 
You  are  like  an  old  man 
Watching  children  fly  from  his  fingertips. 
In  your  kirtle  of  borrowed  skies 
You  find  a  sorrow  luring  your  horizons 
Into  hesitating  brightness.  .  .  . 
When  night  remembers,  you  have  straightened 
Into  stealthy,  angry  calmness 
Fingering  it  first,  unsent  arrow. 
[73] 


STEEL-MILLS:  SOUTH  CHICAGO 

I 

This  red  hush  toppling  over  the  sky, 

Wanders  one  step  toward  the  stars 

And  dies  in  a  questioning  shiver. 

The  steel-mill  chimneys  fling  their  gaunt  seeking 

A  little  distance  into  the  red 

That  softly  combs  their  smoky  hair. 

The  steel-mill  chimneys  only  live  at  night 

When  crimson  light  makes  love  to  them 

And  star-light  trickles  through  the  red, 

Like  glimpses  of  some  far-off  fairy  tale. 

Throughout    the    day    the    steel-mill    chimneys 

stand 

Rigidly  within  the  wind-whirled  glare: 
Only  night  can  bring  them  supple  straightness. 

II 

From  the  little,  brown  gate  that  does  not  see 

them 
Because  its  eyes  are  blind  with  wooing  soot, 

[74] 


An  endless  stream  of  men  scatters  out 
Into  the  cool  bewilderment  of  morning. 
Upon  their  lips  a  limply  child-like  surrender 
Curves  out  to  the  light,  as  though  they  felt 
The  presence  of  an  unassuming  strangeness. 
The  morning  hides  from  their  eyes: 
They  walk  on,  in  great  strides, 
Like   blind   men    swinging   over   a   well-known 

scene. 

Their  faces  twitch  with  echoes  of  iron  fists: 
Their  faces  hold  a  swarthy  stupor 
Loosened  by  little  fingers  of  morning  light 
Until  it  droops  into  reluctant  life. 
And  then  their  eyes,  made  flat  by  night, 
Swell  into  a  Madonna-like  surprise 
At  children  trooping  back  in  huge  disguise. 
The  oranges  in  lunch-room  windows  change 
To  sleek  suns  dipped  in  sleepy  light, 
And  rounded  tarts  in  china  plates 
Are  like  red  heart-beats,  resting  but  not  dead. 
A  trolley-car  speeds  by 
And  seems  a  strident  lyric  of  motion. 
Wagons  rumble  down  the  street 
Like  drums  enticing  weariness  to  step.  .  .  . 
The  hearts   of  these  steel-striding  men 
Ascend  and  blend  within  their  eyes, 
[75] 


And  yet,  these  men  are  unaware  of  this. 

They  only  feel  a  fluid  relief 

Voicing,  in  a  clustered  roar, 

The  cries  of  struggling  thoughts  unshaped  by 

words. 
But  there  are  some  who  break  forth  from  the 

rest. 

This   old  Hungarian   strides  along 
And  binds  naively-winged  prayer-sandals 
Upon  the  heavy  feet  of  shuffling  loves. 
Gently,  he  plays  with  his  beard 
As  though  his  fingers  touched  a  woman's  hair. 
And  this  young  Slav  whose  surly  blasphemy 
Curls  his  face  into  a  simple  hate, 
Has  taken  iron  into  his  laugh 
And  uses  it  to  hew  his  stony  mind. 
While  this  Italian  whose  deep  olive  skin 
Shines    like    sunlight    groping    through    dense 

leaves, 

Forgets  his  battered  happiness 
And  bows  with  mock  grace  to  his  shouting  day. 
Beside  him  is  a  fellow-countryman 
Walking  aimless,  dazed  with  joy  of  motion. 
Upon  his  face  a  glistening  vacancy 
Lights  the  mildly  querying  thoughts 
That  seek  each  other  but  never  meet. 
[76] 


Behind  him  steps  a  stalwart  Pole 
Whose  rhythmic,  stately  insolence 
Turns  the  sidewalk  into  a  grey  carpet, 
Grey  as  the  shades  that  race  across  his  face 
And  show  the  savage  squalor  of  his  soul. 
Night  has  broken  her  heart  upon  him, 
Only  scarring  his  bitter  smile. 
A  street  of  little,  jack-o'-lantern  houses 
Veering  into  leering  saloons, 
Where  the  night,  a  crazy  child, 
Dips  herself  in  sallow  rouge 
And  chases  oaths  and  heavy  mirth 
And  even  human  beings: 
Where  the  smoky  sadness  of  the  steel-mills 
Wanders  hesitantly  into  death 
And  drops  a  ghostly  blur  upon  this  girl. 
Her  numbly  waxen,  cherub  face 
Emerges  gently  from  the  doorway's  blackness 
As  though  the  dark  had  given  birth  to  it. 
And  then  the  falling  light  reveals 
That  something  of  a  village  hangs  about  her: 
Something  slumbering  and  ample. 
The  doorway  is  too  small  to  hold 
Her  shoulders  that  are  like  a  hill's  broad  curves 
Dwindled  in  the  distance.  .  .  . 
She  is  one  of  many  earth-curved  girls 
[77] 


Who  listened  to  the  insistent  tinkle 

Of  wind-winged  music  from  a  far-off  land: 

Listened  and  knew  not 

That  their  own  hearts  faintly  played. 

So  she  ran  to  this  far  phantom, 

Only  finding  it  within  herself 

When  the  city's  sly  fists  rained  upon  it. 

Then  once  more  she  fled 

W'ith  a  dead  heart  whose  restless  pallor 

Crept  to  squalid  wantonness,  for  refuge. 

And  now  she  stands  within  this  doorway, 

Uttering  muffled  innuendoes 

To  the  drained  men  of  her  race. 

Yet,  something  of  a  village  hangs  about  her: 

Something  slumbering  and  ample 

Stealing  from  the  earth  curves  of  her  shoulders. 

Ill 

The  steel-mill  workers  straggle  down  this  street, 
Clanging  shut  the  doorways  of  their  souls, 
And  the  sound  rips  their  lips  open. 
The  steel-mill  workers  do  not  know  of  this: 
They  only  seek  something  that  will  sweeten 
The  dirt  that  has  eaten  into  their  flesh 
And  change  it  to  raw  music. 
They  straggle  down  this  street, 
[78] 


Their  faces  slack  and  oiled  with  amorousness. 
Like  cats  they  play  with  their  desires, 
Biting  them  with  little  laughs 
Until  the  sallow  houses  draw  them  in. 
And  then  the  night  pursues  their  revelry : 
Echoes  from  the  shut  doors  of  their  souls. 

IV 

Three  bent  women  and  a  child 
Stoop  before  the  steel-mill  gate 
As  though  the  morning's  ghastly  murmur 
Washed  against  them  in  a  wave 
Stiffening  them  into  resisting  curves. 
One  is  old  and  floridly  misshapen. 
Years  have  melted  out  within  her  frame, 
Flooding  her  with  lukewarm  loves. 
The  wrinkles  on  her  flabby  face 
Are  like  a  faded  scrawl  of  pain 
Scattered  by  the  flesh  on  which  it  rests. 
Her  frayed  shawl  hanging  unaware  of  her 
Is  a  symbol  of  her  heart. 
The  woman  standing  at  her  side 
Is  tall  and  like  a  slanting  scarecrow 
Coldly  jerking  in  the  morning's  glare. 
Only  when  she  lifts  a  bony  hand 
Tapping  life  against  her  face, 
[79] 


Does  the  image  disappear. 

Dead  dreams  dangle  in  her  heart, 

Limply  hanging  from  their  rainbow  sashes, 

And  whenever  one  sash  trembles, 

Then,  she  lifts  a  gnarled  hand  to  her  face 

And  tastes  a  moment  of  departing  life. 

Near  her  stands  a  slimly  rigid  woman 

With  an  iron  fear  upon  her  bones. 

A  worn  strait-jacket  of  lines 

Cuts  the  dying  youth  upon  her  face. 

The  slender  child  beside  her, 

Buried  within  staidly  murky  clothes, 

Glances  frightenedly  up  at  her  mother: 

Glances  as  one  who  dances  to  a  gate 

And  fumbles  for  a  latch  that  hides  itself. 

Then  from  the  rusty-reveried  steel-mill  gate 

An  endless  stream  of  men  scatter  out 

Into  the  cool  bewilderment  of  morning. 

Upon  their  lips  a  limply  child-like  surrender 

Curves  out  to  the  light,  as  though  they  felt 

The  presence  of  an  unassuming  strangeness. 


[80] 


SOUTH  STATE  STREET:  CHICAGO 

I 

Rows  of  blankly  box-like  buildings 
Raise  their  sodden  architecture 
Into   the  poised   lyric   of  the  sky. 
At     their     feet,     pawn-shops     and     burlesque 

theatres 

Yawn  beneath  their  livid  confetti. 
In  the  pawn-shop  windows,  violins, 
Cut-glass    bowls   and   satchels   mildly   blink 
Upon  the  mottled  turbulence  outside, 
And  sit  with  that  detached  assurance 
Gripping  things  inanimate. 
Near  them,  slyly  shaded  cabarets 
Stand  in  bland  and   ornate  sleep, 
And  the  glassy  luridness 
Of  penny-arcades  flays  the  eyes. 
The  black  crowd  clatters  like  an  idiot's  wrath. 

[81] 


II 

Wander  with  me  down  this  street 
Where  the  spectral  night  is  caught 
Like  moon-paint  on  a  colourless  lane  .  .  . 
On  this  corner  stands  a  woman 
Sleekly,  sulkily  complacent 
Like  a  tigress  nibbling  bits  of  sugar. 
At  her  side,  a  brawny,  white-faced  man 
Whose  fingers  waltz  upon  his  checkered  suit, 
Searches  for  one  face  amidst  the  crowd. 
(His  smile  is  like  a  rambling  sword.) 
His  elbows  almost  touch  a  snowy  girl 
Whose  body  blooms  with  cool  withdrawal. 
From  her  little  nook  of  peaceful  scorn 
She  casts  unseeing  eyes  upon  the  crowd. 
Near  her  stands  a  weary  newsboy 
With  a  sullenly  elfin  face. 
The  night  has  leaned  too  intimately 
On  the  frightened  scampering  of  his  soul. 
But  to  this  old,  staidly  patient  woman 
With  her  softly  wintry  eyes, 
Night  bends  down  in  gentle  revelation 
Undisturbed  by  joy  or  hatred. 
At  her  side  two  factory  girls 
In  slyly  jaunty  hats  and  swaggering  coats, 
Weave  a  twinkling  summer  with  their  words: 
[82] 


A  summer  where  the  night  parades 

Rakishly,  and  like  a  gold  Beau  Brummel. 

With  a  gnome-like  impudence 

They  thrust  their  little,  pink  tongues  out 

At  men  who  sidle  past. 

To  them,  the  frantic  dinginess  of  day 

Has  melted  to  caressing  restlessness 

Tingling  with  the  pride  of  breasts  and  hips. 

At  their  side  two  dainty,  languid  girls 

Playing  with  their  suavely  tangled  dresses, 

Touch  the  black  crowd  with  unsearching  eyes. 

But  the  old  man  on  the  corner, 

Bending  over  his  cane  like  some  tired  warrior 

Resting  on  a  sword,  peers  at  the  crowd 

With  the  smouldering  disdain 

Of  a  King  whipped  out  of  his  domain. 

For  a  moment  he  smiles  uncertainly. 

Then  wears  a  look  of  frail  sternness. 

Musty.  Rabelaisian  odours  stray 
From  this  naively  gilded  family-entrance 
And  make  the  body  of  a  vagrant 
Quiver  as  though  unseen  roses  grazed  him. 
His  face  is  blackly  stubbled  emptiness 
Swerving  to  the  rotted  prayers  of  eyes. 
Yet,  sometimes  his  thin  arm  leaps  out 
[83] 


And  hangs  a  moment  in  the  air, 

As  though  he  raised  a  violin  of  hate 

And  lacked  the  strength  to  play  it. 

A  woman  lurches  from  the  family-entrance. 

With  tense  solicitude  she  hugs 

Her  can  of  beer  against  her  stunted  bosom 

And  mumbles  to  herself. 

The  trampled  blasphemy  upon  her  face 

Holds  up,  in  death,  its  watery,  barren  eyes. 

Indifferently,  she  brushes  past  the  vagrant: 

Life  has  peeled  away  her  sense  of  touch. 


Ill 

With  groping  majesty,  the  endless  crowd 
Pounds  its  searching  chant  of  feet 
Down  this  tawdrily  resplendent  street. 
People  stray  into  a  burlesque  theatre 
Framed  with  scarlet,  blankly  rotund  girls. 
Here  a  burly  cattle-raiser  walks 
With  the  grace  of  wind-swept  prairie  grass. 
Behind  him  steps  a  slender  clerk 
Tendering   his   sprightly   stridency 
To  the  stolid,  doll-like  girl  beside  him. 
At  his  side  a  heavy  youth 
Dully  stands  beneath  his  swaggering  mask; 
[84] 


And  a  smiling  man  in  black  and  white 
Walks,  like  some  Pierrot  grown  middle-aged. 

Mutely  twinkling  fragments  of  a  romance: 

Tiny  lights  stand  over  this  cabaret. 

Men   and   women   jovially   emboldened 

Stroll  beneath  the  curtained  entrance, 

And  their  laughs,  like  softly  brazen  cow-bells, 

Change  the  scene  to  a  strange  Pastoral. 

Hectic  shepherdesses  drunk  with  night, 

Women  mingle  their  coquettish  colours.  .  .  . 

Suddenly,  a  man  leaps  out 

From  the  doorway's  blazing  pallor, 

Smashing  into  the  drab   sidewalk. 

His  drunken  lips  and  eyelids  break  apart 

Like  a  clown  in  sudden  suicide. 

Then  the  mottled  nakedness 

Of  the  scene  comes,   like  a  blow. 

Stoically  crushed  in  hovering  grey 
Night  lies  coldly  on  this  street. 
Momentary  sounds  crash  into  night 
Like  ghostly  curses  stifled  in  their  birth.  .  .  . 
And  over  all  the  blankly  box-like  buildings 
Raise  their  sodden  architecture 
Into  the  poised  lyric  of  the  sky. 
[85] 


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